Wild paparazzi encounters go back further than you think, predating TMZ vans and even the word “paparazzo” itself. We’ve seen celebrities losing their cool, oftentimes rightly so, for about as long as photographers have been chasing them. A memorable scuffle with a paparazzo makes for a great, timeless headline no matter how ridiculous or meaningless the provocation behind it was.
Here are seven of the most violent and outrageous paparazzi fallouts in celebrity history.
Marlon Brando breaks a photographer’s jaw
You could say that Ron Galella was an opportunist, making his career out of showing up uninvited. And by the early 1970s, Brando had already told him to back off several times. One night outside a restaurant in New York’s Chinatown, Brando had enough of Ron, turned around, and hit him square in the face. Brando may have had the makings of a boxer, because with just that single punch he not only broke Galella’s jaw but also knocked out five of his teeth.
Even though Galella needed reconstructive surgery after the incident, that didn’t discourage him in the least. He kept photographing Brando, at one point showing up in a football helmet, both as a joke and potential protection from Brando’s fists.
Britney Spears takes an umbrella to a car
In February 2007, weeks after shaving her hair, Spears pulled into a Los Angeles gas station and spotted a photographer parked nearby. From her vehicle, she pulled out an umbrella and then proceeded to swing it at the paparazzo’s windshield while he kept the camera rolling the whole time.
To this day, the infamous clip is still the image most people picture first when they think of a celebrity meltdown.
Kanye West breaks a camera at LAX
Getting followed through an airport will wear on most people, especially if you’re on a short fuse. That was the case for Kanye West that day. When he and his bodyguard ran into a group of photographers at LAX, Kanye was unable to control his impulses.
He grabbed the camera from one photographer’s hand, and his bodyguard wrestled it away and smashed it on the ground. Kanye then slammed the photographer’s flash down too. Both men were arrested on the spot on suspicion of felony vandalism, though the charges were later dropped after Kanye completed anger management classes and paid for the broken equipment.
Woody Harrelson blames a zombie
This incident shares many similarities with Kanye’s, but what stuck in people’s minds was Harrelson’s hilarious excuse.
After a TMZ photographer followed Harrelson through New York’s LaGuardia Airport in 2009, the actor broke the man’s camera and shoved him during the confrontation. Afterwards, Harrelson explained that he had just wrapped the filming of Zombieland. It seems he was still very much in character and mistook the photographer for one of the zombie extras from the set. Police looked at the complaint, but nothing came of it.
Shia LaBeouf throws his coffee and runs
The year was 2010, LaBeouf was minding his own business sitting outside a coffee shop in Washington, D.C. He then noticed someone taking his picture. Angered, he impulsively spilled his coffee on him and then proceeded to take off running.
And this wasn’t a one-off; LaBeouf was on a mean streak in 2010. Months after that first run-in, he got filmed grabbing at another cameraman’s equipment while running around.
Alec Baldwin shoves a photographer before his wedding
Baldwin has never concealed how much he hates being photographed, and if that wasn’t evident enough, it became so a few days before his marriage to Hilaria Thomas back in 2012.
While picking up their marriage license in Manhattan, Baldwin and his fiancée ran into a photographer working for the New York Daily News. Baldwin allegedly pushed the man repeatedly as he asked him to stop, which led the photographer to file an assault complaint with the NYPD.
Justin Bieber loses a shoe in a scuffle
Bieber’s teen fame came with a level of attention that was hard for anyone to manage emotionally. He repeatedly felt stalked by paparazzi and had several run-ins with them. But the one in 2012 with then-girlfriend Selena Gomez was the most notorious.
The photographer invaded Bieber’s personal space, and things got physical. By the time it was over, the pop star had lost both his cap and one of his shoes. While it wasn’t his most serious clash with the paparazzi, it’s the one people still bring up.